Various industrial and mobile applications use hydraulic cylinders to control the movement and position of machinery. In general, these cylinders include a cylinder barrel within which a piston is arranged for reciprocating motion along an axis. A piston rod is secured at one end to the piston. The piston rod extends out of one end of the cylinder barrel along the axis of motion. The end of the piston rod that is external to the cylinder barrel is coupled directly or indirectly to a machine component. The piston divides the cylinder barrel into separate chambers. Fluid entering one of the chambers causes the piston and, thus, the piston rod to move relative to the housing. This movement of the piston rod drives the movement of the machine component.
Precise control of the position of the piston is generally fundamental to controlling the operation of the machinery. Measuring the position or velocity of the piston relative to the cylinder is often needed to achieve such control using conventional feedback control techniques. Accordingly, industry has produced various mechanical, magnetic, acoustic, and optical techniques for detecting the instantaneous position of the moving piston or piston rod.
Many position detection systems are expensive, cumbersome, or difficult to mount on the cylinder. Further, position detection systems for hydraulic cylinders often operate in harsh environments caused by internal conditions, such as pressurized fluid that drives the motion of the piston, and external conditions, such as dust and debris. Some types of position detection systems, such as Linear Variable Differential Transformers (LVDTs) and linear scales, can be unreliable or easily damaged in a harsh environment.
Some techniques entail encoding piston rod positions on the piston rod itself, and reading the encoded positions as the piston rod moves past a reference point, using a reading technique, e.g., optical, magnetic, mechanical, suited to the particular type of encoding. Some known techniques cut grooves, etch recesses, or marks in the rod. Such modifications, however, can adversely affect the rod's strength. Another known technique, described in the UK Patent Application No. GB 2 096 421, is to encode the position information magnetically in the rod material of the piston rod. In this UK patent application, the piston rod is constructed of steel and can be magnetized. However, this rod material is magnetically “soft.” Magnetically soft material has low coercivity, which is a measure of difficulty for magnetically encoding and erasing information in that material. Thus, the position information encoded in rod material with low coercivity is subject to accidental erasure or alteration.